The Cluster of Tech

Monthly Archives: September 2012

According to research from NPD Connected Intelligence, Android users use only 870MB of cellular data per month, and 2.5GB of WiFi data per month. This doesn’t come as a big surprise, considering most Android users are average people. But the interesting part is how it’s broken up by age.

Schmidt said Apple “is actually a very good partner. Our two companies are literally talking all the time about everything.” However, he added, “With respect to Apple patents, the best thing we can tell there are plenty of prior arts and I don’t want to go beyond that…”

The LG Optimus Vu, which launched on Verizon as the LG Intuition with Verizon earlier this month, was undoubtedly a strange device. Taking a page from Samsung’s – ahem – note book, LG created the Vu for the phablet market, but decided to go with a somewhat awkward 4:3 aspect ratio, adding to the device’s laundry list of quirks.

Well, the Korean manufacturer has just officially announced the Vu’s successor – the Optimus Vu II. While it’s a bit surprising to see a follow-up on the Vu this soon, the device looks alright on paper, and offers a few key spec improvements over its older counterpart.

Just after initially unveiling Google Play Services, Google has made the APK installable directly from the Play Store.

For those who missed the announcement, Google Play Services is an APK rolling out automatically to devices running Android 2.2+ that will allow Android apps to easily integrate with Google services like Google+. At present, the app (which is in version 1.0 “Asiago”) includes components and relevant client APIs for OAuth 2.0 authentication, Google+ sign-in, and Google+ +1 buttons. Google assures users that “we anticipate more Google services to be continuously added, so be on the lookout for these updates.”

Google’s Android smartphone OS is facing a lot of challengers in the low-cost smartphone segment, from Huawei, ZTE, Samsung and Nokia at the vendor end to Mozilla coming from its position in browser software. But for the short term it appears that there is little for Android to worry about from any single contender. Research out today from Strategy Analytics notes that one of these, Firefox OS, Mozilla’s mobile effort, will only sit on 1% of all global smartphone shipments in 2013, versus 67% for Android, and it could take up to two years for it to turn that around.

To be fair, Firefox has made some headway with carriers and OEMs with its low-cost focused smartphone OS — those that backed the company’s mobile OS efforts in July include Telefonica, Sprint, Deutsche Telekom and ZTE. The low-cost, sub-$100 device smartphone segment is a growing one, with Deloitte projecting there will be 500 million of these sold this year alone.

Apple has shown interest in building an inductive charging mat that would allow users to dock, charge and sync their portable devices by simply placing them on top of the accessory.

The details come from a newly published Apple patent application discovered on Thursday byAppleInsider. The filing, entitled “Device Orientation Based Docking Functions,” describes a “docking device” that would allow devices to be placed on top of it.